When he called up the Grantham a second time, at nine o'clock,
Maggie's voice came to him:
"Hello. Who this, please?"
"Mr. Brandon."
He heard a stilted "Oh!" at the other end of the line "I'm coming
right up to see you," he said.
"I--I don't think you--"
"I'll be there in then minutes," Larry interrupted the startled voice
and hung up.
He counted that Maggie, after his sparing her at Cedar Crest, would
receive him and treat him at least no worse than an enemy with whom
there was a half hour's truce. Sure enough, when he rang the bell of
her suite, Maggie herself admitted him to her sitting-room. She was
taut and pale, her look neither friendly nor unfriendly.
"Don't you know the risk you're running," she whispered when the door
was closed--"coming here like this, in the open?"
"The time has come for risks, Maggie," he announced.
"But you were safe enough where you were. Why take such risks?"
"For your sake."
"My sake?"
"To take you away from these people you're tied up with. Take you away
now."
At an earlier time this would have been a fuse to a detonation of
defiance from her. But now she said nothing at all, and that was
something.
"Since I've come out into the open, everything's going to be in the
open. Listen, Maggie!" The impulse had suddenly come upon him, since
his plan to awaken Maggie by her psychological reactions had
apparently failed, to tell her everything.
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